Weekly Visits
by NaijaChiqa
Summary: Post finale. Ryan makes weekly visits to Newport. Ryan, Seth, Theresa.


I do not own The O.C.

The show's returning and all my unfinished fics will be entering the land of AU. Anyway, I decided to get this one shot in before the second season made it impossible.

Warning: Ryan/Marissa implied. I am not a fan of the couple but I recently watched the earlier episodes and they were cute then.

---

Seth walked through the glass doors and straight to his car. It was the same routine every week; Seth would grudgingly accompany him to the hospital and spend the entire ride back in silence. He'd been shocked that first time especially when he contrasted it with his behavior on the way _there_. Then, he'd been scared that he was in grave danger of losing his hearing to Seth's incessant chatter.

Ryan stayed lost in his thoughts till Seth hit the brakes and stopped in front of the bus station. Ryan just kept staring out of the window.

"I guess we're here," Seth finally said.

Ryan sighed, unlocked the door then turned to him. "Thank you for the ride." Seth nodded and stretched his lips into a smile that barely reached his cheeks.

"I wish you'd understand...," Ryan started softly.

"What?"

"You know..."

"Oh, if you're talking about how once a week you spend your money to get on a bus to visit a girl who doesn't even care about you, then no, I don't understand."

"Seth..."

Seth ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "Ryan, she got drunk and slit her wrists!"

"I know that. But do you expect me to leave her now... now that she needs me most?"

"Why not? What about what you need? Let's not forget that if not for her, if not for her introducing Oliver to you, everything that happened after that wouldn't have and you wouldn't even be in Chino right now. You'd be back with us where you belong!"

"Seth, you can't blame her for all that."

"No? But can I blame her for refusing to see us for two weeks? She didn't even care how far you traveled to see her. Can I blame her for that?"

"Seth, she wasn't well. She sees us now, doesn't she?"

"Whatever. I guess I just can't understand why you'd still love someone who destroyed your life. Someone so selfish... I don't care what anybody says but cutting yourself, suicide, whatever it is she was trying to do, is selfish. And disgusting. And you're still there. Why, Ryan? Why? Why do you spend your time caring about someone who doesn't even care about her own damn self?"

Ryan climbed out of the car, walked a few steps to open the back door then pulled his bag out. He'd give Seth an answer when he figured it out himself. He wasn't even sure how he felt about her. He just knew that with everything that Seth said, knowing all her faults, he still cared about her. And he knew that neither of them was in a position to be in a healthy relationship right then, so it wasn't about wanting to be with her. He just wanted to be there for her and help her be happy. And it wouldn't change even if she didn't care about him.

As he sat on the bench, waiting for his bus to arrive, he wondered if this was what maturity was all about -accepting that he couldn't control everything and that no matter how much he wanted to return to the life he'd just begun to get accustomed to, and the girlfriend he'd only begun to understand, things were just better this way. And that being a man meant repressing his feelings and needs and just making the best decision for everyone else. As he walked through the bus and occupied the seat next to the skinny kid in the red sweater, he decided that adulthood wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

----

Theresa dropped the diaper box when she heard the door unlock. She picked up her bag, picked Amy up and carried her to the living room.

"It's a good thing you showed up," she said, dumping her daughter in her father's arms. "If I don't leave now, I'm going to be late for work." She gave Amy a quick kiss and said, "Ryan, she needs a diaper change. Her bottle is in the fridge so don't forget to feed her in about 30 minutes."

She picked up her jacket and walked out of the house.

As Theresa put her key into her car ignition, she wondered if Ryan would look at the clock and notice that just like she'd done on that day for the past two weeks, she was leaving for work over two hours early.

Living with Ryan was great on every day except Thursday. He was caring, sharing and _himself_ every time but when he returned from Newport. Theresa had been freaked out exactly five weeks ago when he sat next to her and laughed long and hard at Joey's antics with a chicken. The first red flag was that Ryan rarely laughed that hard. The second was that Ryan was rarely amused by that brand of humor.

She tried to dismiss it as Ryan having an off-day till it was the 'cackling hyena' all over again the following week and it finally dawned on her that it was somehow related to his Newport visits. She'd initially thought it was about him feeling homesick and wanting to return to the Cohens, but she quickly rejected that because she wasn't about to let herself feel guilty about making him take care of his responsibilities. Upon further inspection, she decided it had everything to do with him visiting that hospital. She'd tried to talk to him about it but he refused, so she'd found a way of occupying the time between his return and her 8pm shift.

Since she'd already tweezed her eyebrows and painted her nails in previous weeks, she chose to go to the grocery store and get some shopping done. As she pulled into the parking lot, she decided that she still hadn't figured out what Ryan saw in Marissa. As far as she could see, she was a skinny, average-looking, selfish, rich kid who'd never had to struggle for anything in her lifetime. But that wasn't why Theresa hated her. In fact, in some ways, she envied Marissa's lifestyle. Yes, she loved taking care of herself but she knew that part of that stemmed from having 'Chino choices.' But there were many things she'd wanted to do, like finishing high school and going to college to study to become a nurse. And having rich parents made that easier. So she couldn't hate Marissa for _that_. What she hated was her effect on Ryan. What about her made him take all these risks to protect her? What was it that made him shift his hours around just so that he could take Thursdays off to visit her at the hospital? What was it about her that unnerved him so much that aliens seemed to invade his body every time he returned?

As Theresa drove out of the parking lot, the back seat of her car filled with groceries, she looked at her nails and figured that it might be a week before she needed to get them redone. She wondered how much money she'd have to save to keep up with her weekly activities. She'd always enjoyed her own company but not like _this_. As she counted her quarters to see if she had enough change to get her car running on a half tank of gas, she wondered if she'd be flat broke before Ryan snapped out of it and returned to being the boy she used to love.


End file.
